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ST. JOHN 



The Prisoner of Patmos 



BY 



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BISHOP NEWMAN 



* 









New York 

Printed by Hunt & Eaton 

150 Fifth Avenue 

1896 






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-&>%* 



Copyright, 1896, by 
MRS. J P. NEWMAN. 






THIS MONOGRAPH 
LOVINGLY INSCRIBED 

TO OUR 

DEAR FRIEND, 
MRS. LELAND STANFORD. 



PROLOGUE 



T VENTURE again to waft on a wavelet 
* of Christian effort two more monographs 
from manuscripts presented to me by Bishop 
Newman for the Evangel Systematized Per- 
petual Bible Readers' Fund. 

The first of these booklets is entitled St. 
John, the Prisoner of Patmos, from a recent 
visit to this sacred island. Its companion is 
entitled Aurora Borealis Amid the Icebergs 
of Greenland's Mountains, written while at 
this northernmost part of our hemisphere. 

We trust they will be crowned with the 
same favor as. their predecessors, The White 
Stone and Pearl of Pearls, and bring into 
the Bible treasury as many silver dollars. 

This formulated perpetual fund was adopt- 
ed and legalized by the Woman's Foreign 
Missionary Society of the Methodist Episco- 
pal Church at its recent executive session at 
.St. Louis. Already six native Bible women 
are reading under this plan. 

Mrs. J. P. Newman. 



ST. JOHN, 

THE PRISONER OF PATMOS 



ST. JOHN touched three centuries. 
Born in the last lustrum of the 
last century B. C, he lived through the 
first one hundred years of the Christian 
era and closed his eventful career at 
Ephesus in the reign of Trajan at the 
beginning of the second century. He 
outlived twelve Roman emperors, in- 
clusive of Augustus and Nerva, two of 
whom committed suicide, seven of whom 
were murdered, and nearly all of whom 
were the merciless persecutors of the 
religion which is now the hope and joy 



6 ST. JOHN, 

of humanity. All the holy apostles had 
been crowned with martyrdom, and he 
was left to settle the canon of the Gos- 
pel history by formally attesting the 
truth of the first three gospels and 
writing his own to supply what they left 
wanting. 

He was born under the magnificent 
reign of Caesar Augustus, whose vast 
empire swept from the River Euphrates 
to the Western Ocean, and from the 
Wall of Antoninus to the Mountains of 
the Moon, and within whose vast em- 
pire dwelt one hundred and twenty mil- 
lions of our race. Of the splendor of 
that age it is difficult to speak in ade- 
quate terms. All that wealth could 
procure, or genius create, or ambition 
desire, filled Rome with glory and the 



THE PRISONER OF PATMOS. 7 

provincial capitals with temples and 
palaces. It was an age of renown. Poets 
and orators, statesmen and warriors, 
philosophers and historians added great- 
ness to the period, while luxury and 
vice, war and conquest, prodigality and 
meanness held high carnival. 

In a small province of that great em- 
pire, and on the peaceful shores of Gen- 
nesaret, St. John was born. His father 
had accumulated wealth from the fish- 
eries of his native lake, and his son 
passed frequently from Tiberias to Jeru- 
salem in the management of his father's 
business. There is a well-founded tra- 
dition that Zebedee had a city residence 
in Jerusalem, which he sold to the high 
priest Caiaphas, and which accounts for 
the consideration that Caiaphas ex- 



8 ST. JOHN, 

tended to St. John on the night of our 
Lord's trial. 

It is an old saying that great men 
have great mothers. St. John's mother 
was Salome, sister of the Virgin Mary, 
who was St. John's aunt, and he was 
first cousin to our Lord. She was a 
positive, decided, ambitious woman, 
who desired that her two sons should 
have the most conspicuous positions in 
the Messiah's coming kingdom, of which 
she fondly dreamed. Her comparative 
wealth permitted her to follow the 
Lord and* minister to his wants in all his 
journeyings. She was at the cross. She 
purchased the spices for the Lord's 
burial, and she was among the first at 
the tomb in the morning of the resur- 
rection, when she saw the Lord. Some 



THE PRISONER OF PATMOS. 9 

pronounced her a managing, ambitious 
mother, like Rebecca of old, because 
she coveted exalted positions for her 
sons ; but her petition was a compli- 
ment to her faith in the on-coming 
glory of the Messiah's kingdom. Ex- 
cited by the popular acclaim at that 
moment accorded to the Christ, which to 
her was the promise of the Messiah's 
larger glory in the future, she based her 
claim on family relationship, and re- 
quested that her sons, cousins-german 
to our Lord, should be exalted with 
him in his glory. And her sons were 
exalted. Her son James was the first of 
the apostles to wear the martyr's crown, 
and her son, the beloved John, is re- 
vered wherever Christ is known. If her 
sister Mary is " blessed among women " 



10 ST. JOHN. 

as the mother of Jesus, Salome is the 
mother of him " whom Jesus loved." 
She is one of the great mothers in the 
annals of our race, and as the mother of 
a great son she ranks with Susanna 
Wesley and Mary Washington. 

In all the ages and in all lands men 
have esteemed it the highest honor to 
be the intimate friend of a great man. 
Kings, statesmen, and scholars have had 
their favorites, to whom they confided 
their inmost thoughts and disclosed 
their projecting plans. Christ had many 
disciples, seventy evangelists, and twelve 
apostles. Out of the illustrious twelve 
he selected three to be his confidential 
companions, and of the three he chose 
St. John, who has the rare preeminence of 
being " the disciple whom Jesus loved." 



THE PRISONER OF PATMOS. 1 1 

Why this honor? His personal beauty ? 
All the artists, ancient and modern, 
whether they wrought on marble or on 
canvas, conceived of him as the perfec- 
tion of manly beauty, who charmed all 
by the gracefulness of his proportions 
and the sweetness of his manners. Was 
it the repose and clearness of his intel- 
lect ? All his reported utterances and 
all his writings indicate a high order of 
mind. His letters to the " elect lady" 
are the purest and sweetest in literature ; 
his gospel is the most incisive, analytic- 
al, and subjective transmitted to us ; his 
Apocalypse is sublime in imagery, grand 
in diction, and powerful in description of 
all the sacred books. In all literature 
there is nothing more beautiful than his 
story of Bethany, nothing more pathetic 



12 ST. JOHN, 

than his " Mary to the Saviour's tomb," 
and his pen portraiture of Christ as he 
appeared to him on Patmos is as fault- 
less as it is majestic. Shall we not 
rather say it was his Christian character 
assimilated into the likeness of Christ? 

What a miracle of grace was St. John ! 
Born amid the mountains of Galilee and 
on the oft-swept storm shores of his 
native Tiberias, his impetuous spirit had 
been christened " Son of Thunder." 
His vehement temper would blaze forth 
like a mountain on fire, and in his im- 
pulsive vindictiveness he would call 
down fire from heaven on the offending 
villagers of Samaria. By nature a bigot, 
he preferred that a demon should for- 
ever torment a brother man than to have 
the evil spirit expelled by an unknown 



THE PRISONER OF PATMOS. 13 

disciple of his Lord. Grace changed all 
this. His strong spirit became calm as 
the embosomed Lake of Gennesaret 
when peaceful zephyrs whispered o'er its 
tranquil bosom. The bigot became the 
generous friend of all men, and the vin- 
dictive disciple became the apostle of 
love. 

Who occupies a more conspicuous 
place in New Testament history than 
St. John? But we should go to an 
earlier period than the baptism of Jesus 
for the origin of this intimacy. As Mary 
and Salome were sisters and Elizabeth 
was their cousin, and as these three 
mothers were devout Jewesses, it is 
more than probable that in their youths 
Jesus and St. John and John the Baptist 
often met in Jerusalem at the great 



14 ST. JOHN, 

national feasts whither their parents 
went. Having received their elementary 
education in their native towns, and as 
Jewish lads were sent at the age of 
twelve to one of the many colleges in 
Jerusalem, it is highly probable that 
they were at college together, and for 
aught we know in the school of Gamaliel, 
where they met young Saul of Tarsus. 
What a group for a painter ! Christ, 
the Saviour ; John the Baptist, the fore- 
runner; St. John, the evangelist; and 
St. Paul, the apostle to the whole Gen- 
tile world. Did they ever talk of their 
future ? 

St. John was an early disciple of John 
the Baptist, and in his gospel he de- 
votes to him thirty-seven verses of a 
chapter of fifty-one verses. He wit- 



THE PRISONER OF PATMOS. 15 

nessed the baptism of Jesus, and re- 
corded the testimony of the great bap- 
tizer. He was the unnamed disciple 
who stood with the baptizer and St. 
Andrew. His own record of the Christ, 
written more than fifty years thereafter, 
is too beautiful to omit: "Again the 
next day after, John stood, and two of 
his disciples; and looking upon Jesus 
as he walked, he saith, Behold the Lamb 
of God ! And the two disciples heard 
him speak, and they followed Jesus. 
Then Jesus turned, and saw them fol- 
lowing, and saith unto them, What seek 
ye? And they said unto him, Master, 
where dvvellest thou ? He saith unto 
them, Come and see. They came and 
saw where he dwelt, and abode with 

him that day : for it was about the tenth 
2 



16 ST. JOHN, 

hour. One of the disciples which heard 
John speak, and followed him, was 
Andrew, Simon Peters brother." What 
a memorable night was that ! Could 
they ever forget it ? 

And now for three years, in the heat 
of summer and the cold of winter, in 
journeyings oft from Capernaum to Jeru- 
salem, through the hamlets of Galilee, 
Samaria, and Judea, on Tabor and 
Olivet, on the peaceful lake and on the 
stormy sea, in the solitude of the desert 
and the crowded metropolis, when trav- 
eling with the twelve and surrounded 
with thronging multitudes, by day and 
by night, St. John was the constant, 
intimate, confiding companion of the 
worlds Messiah. He saw him walk on 
the Sea of Galilee and transfigured on 



THE PRISONER OF PATMOS. 17 

Mount Tabor, and heard him call to life 
again the damsel of Capernaum, the 
widow's son of Nain, and Lazarus of 
Bethany. He saw Mary of Magdala re- 
stored to virtue, blind Bartimeus receive 
his sight, and Simon the leper cleansed. 
He heard the wonderful discourses of 
the Christ, listened to his sacerdotal 
prayers, and witnessed the terrible on- 
slaughts of Pharisee and Sadducee in 
fierce controversy. He sat with him on 
the slopes of Olivet when he wept over 
the doomed Jerusalem and foretold the 
destruction of that far-famed city. He 
joined the joyful procession when Jesus 
entered Jerusalem in triumph. He was 
at the last supper, and was present in 
the garden of agony. He boldly stood 
by the side of his Master in the palace 



18 ST. JOHN, 

of Caiaphas, and was with him through 
that long and dreadful night when in the 
hands of the mob. He was last at the 
cross and received the dying glance of 
the world's Redeemer, and was early at 
the empty tomb and was the first to be- 
lieve in the Lord's resurrection. His 
keen, far-sighted vision was the first to 
discern the Lord standing on the dis- 
tant shores of Tiberias, commanding his 
friends to " cast the net on the right 
side of the ship." With the " eleven " 
and a great company of disciples, both 
men and women, he saw the ascending 
Christ pass into the heavens of love. 
No wonder that in his first general 
epistle he could say, " That which was 
from the beginning, which we have 
heard, which we have seen with our 



THE PRISONER OF PATMOS. 19 

eyes, which we have looked upon, and 
our hands have handled, of the Word of 
life, declare we unto you." 

Less than forty years of his life are 
now behind him ; more than sixty years 
stretch out before him. And what mo- 
mentous years ! He is detained in Je- 
rusalem to comfort and care for Mary, 
the mother of our Lord. We catch only 
glimpses of him during less than half 
the period. He confronts the magician, 
Simon Magus, in Samaria ; he heals 
with Peter a cripple at the " Gate 
Beautiful " in the Holy City, and with 
him is sent to prison ; and in the year 
50 A. D. he is present in the first great 
Christian council, held in Jerusalem, and 
listens to Paul pleading the Christian 
rights of the heathen world. 



20 ST. JOHN. 

From all that we can learn from Scrip- 
ture and infer from tradition, St. John 
was resident of Jerusalem more than 
thirty years, from the ascension of the 
Lord till the death of Mary. He was 
her provider and guardian, and it is more 
than probable that her home was the 
headquarters of the Christians of Jerusa- 
lem and of all who came from afar to visit 
the scenes forever memorable in the his- 
tory of Christ. " Blessed among women," 
her gentle, submissive, obedient spirit 
was an inspiration to all the saints. How 
earnestly they gathered around her while 
she recited the life story of her divine 
Son, her own maiden life, her espousal 
to the good Joseph, the visit to her of 
the angel Gabriel, her visit to her cousin 
Elizabeth, that toilsome journey to Beth- 



THE PRISONER OF PATMOS. 21 

lehem to be enrolled and taxed, the birth 
of her Son, the song of the angels, the 
coming of the shepherds, the " Star of 
the East," the visit of the " Wise Men," 
the slaughter of the innocents, her flight 
into Egypt, her return to Nazareth, the 
finding of her missing Son in the temple 
with the doctors, the eighteen years of 
sweet domestic life amid the hills of her 
Nazarene home, and the departure of her 
Son, when he bade farewell to his mother 
and the scenes of his childhood to enter 
upon that public ministry wherewith to 
bless mankind. And how equally thrilling 
must have been her recital of all she had 
felt and heard and seen throughout those 
three great years, from the wedding in 
Cana to the crucifixion on Calvary, and 
from the empty tomb of Joseph of Ari- 



22 ST. JOHN, 

mathea to the ascension from Olivet. It 
is reasonable to believe that she lived 
to the advanced age of eighty years and 
was permitted to die in peace. Neither 
Herod nor Nero was suffered to molest 
her, and while the storm of persecution 
raged with unwonted fury around her, 
and her nephew, James, was beheaded 
with the sword and St. Peter was im- 
prisoned, the angels protected her until 
commanded to escort her to the pres- 
ence of her glorified Son. And what a 
funeral was hers when all the " followers 
of the Lamb," led by St. John as chief 
mourner, conveyed her precious remains 
out of St. Stephen's Gate, across the 
Valley of the Kidron,to a spot near the 
Garden of Gethsemane, where is the tra- 
ditional tomb, the shrine which to this 






THE PRISONER OF PATMOS. 23 

day attracts pilgrims and travelers to 
the " City of the Great King." 

St. John is now free to leave forever 
the Holy City. Nero is Emperor of 
Rome. Herod Agrippa I rules all Pal- 
estine. Premonitions of the coming 
storm of woe and death were apparent 
to all. Herod had killed St. James, be- 
loved brother of St. John, and had im- 
prisoned St. Peter to put him to death. 
The Jews were restless under the op- 
pressions of the Romans. Nero had 
appointed to the governorship of Pales- 
tine Gessius Florus, that systematic 
plunderer of the people, who were pre- 
voked to rise in their last rebellion. Ves- 
pasian, with sixty thousand soldiers, had 
subdued all Palestine except Jerusalem. 
The Christians prepared to leave the 



24 ST. JOHN, 

Holy City and seek refuge in Pella, sixty 
miles from Jerusalem, overlooking the 
Jordan, amid the mountains of Gilead. 
The news came that Nero had beheaded 
St. Paul in Rome, and the "Seven 
Churches of Asia " were left without a 
leader. St. John discerns the signs of 
the times as the " beginning of sorrows," 
and recalls his Master's words, " Let 
them which be in Judea flee unto the 
mountains." When the last of the Chris- 
tians had escaped, St. John takes a fare- 
well view of Jerusalem. Once more and 
for the last time he visits Gethsemane 
and Calvary, the empty tomb and the 
Mount of Ascension, the temple where 
the Saviour had so often taught, and the 
scene of Pentecost ; then, lingering to 
offer a prayer where St. Stephen was 



THE PRISONER OF PATMOS. 25 

stoned and St. James was beheaded and 
James the Less was murdered, and where 
the blessed Mary was buried, he ascends 
the heights of Scopus and takes his last 
view of the doomed city. How mag- 
nificent the scene — that great city four 
and a half miles in circuit, with walls 
forty feet high, protected by one hundred 
and ninety towers, with Hippicus and 
Phasaelus and Mariamne and Psephinos 
rising to the height of one hundred and 
fifty feet, with the white marble palace 
of Herod on Mount Zion and the Holy 
Temple on Mount Moriah, with its courts 
and galleries and porticos, its Beautiful 
Gate, and protected by the massive 
Tower of Antonia, wherein was Pilate's 
Judgment Hall! As he stood therein 
sad meditation he could hear the tramp 



26 ST. JOHN, 

of Titus and his legions as they came 
from Egypt, from Caesarea, and from 
Tiberias, to encamp on the very hill 
whereon he now stood. What a pro- 
phetic vision rose before him of the 
terrible onset of war and famine, of 
pestilence and conflagration, when the 
flames of the Holy Temple should redden 
those Syrian skies, amid the groans of 
the dying and the imprecations of the 
fallen ! 

Henceforth St. John is an exile. He 
is for the first time on the " Great Sea " 
— the tideless Mediterranean, " whose 
shores are empires/* As he advances, 
his native land recedes from view and 
the snows of Hermon are seen for the 
last time. Never again will he sail on 
his native Gennesaret or tread the 



THE PRISONER OF PATMOS. 27 

streets of Jerusalem. All those dear to 
his heart's best love have passed away, 
and he is a traveler in a new country. 
Before his prophetic soul pass in solemn 
review the calamities soon to come 
upon the " Land of Promise/' the por- 
tents of which are already apparent. 
But great thoughts of the future of his 
Master's kingdom arouse him from his 
sad reveries. Day after day he sails 
over the blue waters of the mighty deep, 
and new scenes allure him on. On his 
right is Tarsus, where Paul was born; on 
his left is Cyprus, home of Barnabas, the 
" Son of Consolation." Now he sees 
Rhodes and the Colossus that spanned 
the entrance to the harbor, and soon he 
enters the mole of Miletus, the port of 
Ephesus, his future home. 



28 ST. JOHN, 

Whether it was the dying request of 
St. Paul or the special petition of the 
elders that St. John should reside 
among the "seven churches of Asia," 
one thing is clear, that Ephesus is to be 
to him in the future what Jerusalem has 
been in the memorable past. He went 
from one capital to another, where men 
do most congregate, where power is 
centralized, and whence issue far-reach- 
ing and commanding influences. He is 
now in the glorious city of Ephesus, the 
most renowned in Ionic Asia. From 
Croesus to Constantine, for one thousand 
years, it had stood in its glory. It owed 
its greatness to Lysimachus, successor of 
Alexander the Great. Its chief renown 
was the Temple of Diana, whose fame 
had filled the world. What Minerva 



THE PRISONER OF PATMOS. 29 

was to the Athenians, Diana was to the 
Ephesians. Such was the adoration 
paid to the goddess that all Greek cities 
contributed to the magnificence of her 
shrine. On the night that Alexander 
the Great was born that splendid fane 
was destroyed by fire. All Greece re- 
sponded to the call of her worshipers, 
and Diana of the Ephesians was en- 
shrined in greater glory. Kings gave 
their crowns and women their jewels. 
Out of the white marble from Mount 
Prion was formed its noble colonnade, 
four hundred and twenty-five feet long 
and two hundred and twenty feet wide, 
of columns sixty feet high and six feet 
in diameter, each one the gift of a king. 
Of the temple itself it is impossible to 
speak in terms of adequate grandeur. 



30 ST. JOHN, 

Within the shrine was the image of the 
goddess which superstition claimed had 
fallen from the skies, and within was de- 
posited the wealth of western Asia, so 
that the temple was to the Ephesians 
what the Bank of England is to Great 
Britain. Associated therewith was the 
power of magic, expressed in mono- 
grams on amulets, to charm away evil 
spirits, and on which those books were 
written which, under the mighty- 
preaching of St. Paul, were committed 
to the flames, but which act excited the 
mob to the wildest frenzy, whose shout 
was, " Great is Diana of the Ephe- 
sians ! " 

This was the proud, wealthy, super- 
stitious city, the future home of St. 
John. Paul and Apollos, Aquila and 



THE PRISONER OF PATMOS. 31 

Priscilla were not there to greet him, 
but the " elders of Ephesus " were there 
to receive him, the last remaining of the 
holy apostles. But his stay was brief. 
The Neronian persecution broke forth 
with malignant fury. The Emperor 
Claudius was dead, and Nero was on 
the throne of the Caesars, who was per- 
mitted to reign through fourteen years, 
the darkest in all the bloody history of 
the twelve Caesars, whose memories are 
recalled with horror. This sixth Caesar 
was " born for a curse to virtue and 
mankind, and all earth cannot show so 
black a mind." The ghosts of his 
mother, Agrippina, and of his wife, 
Octavia, and of Seneca, his teacher, and 
Lucan, the poet, and Britannicus, the 
son of Claudius, all of whom he mur- 



32 ST. JOHN, 

dered, will ever " sit heavy on his soul.'* 
He tortured the Roman Christians by 
the most inhuman methods, and sen- 
tenced St. Paul to martyrdom. His 
persecutions swept to the utmost prov- 
inces of his empire, and neither youth 
nor beauty nor sex escaped the madness 
of his rage. St. John was too conspicu- 
ous in station and character to go un- 
noticed. He was arrested and carried 
to Rome to stand trial before this mon- 
ster of history, who condemned him to 
be thrown into a caldron of boiling oil ; 
but, escaping unhurt, the tyrant banished 
him to Patmos. When on his voyage 
to Ephesus he must have sighted this 
now famous island, but little did he 
then reck that it would be his prison 
home for many years. 



THE PRISONER OF PATMOS. 33 

At that time the islands of the Le- 
vant were densely populated, and the 
^Egean Sea was white with the sails of 
many vessels. In our recent visit to Pat- 
mos we saw much of these Grecian is- 
lands forever famous in the history of 
the world. We had spent the day at 
Syra, the ancient Syros of the Cyclades, 
ten miles long and five miles wide, where 
dwell thirty-four thousand people of the 
Greek and Latin faith. Its capital, Her- 
mopolis, is a busy town of twenty-one 
thousand seamen and merchants, in 
whose harbor float the flags of many na- 
tions. It is a white city, whose lofty 
hill is crowned with the noble Church of 
St. George. Here was born Pherecydes, 
tutor of Pythagoras, and hither came 
the refugees from all parts of Greece 



34 ST. JOHN, 

during the war of the revolution. It 
was nine o'clock at night when we em- 
barked on our little steamer of twenty- 
five tons, called the Joint Maxwell. Our 
proposed voyage had excited the town, 
and crowds of Syrians followed us in 
groups and wondered at our going. Our 
small craft was chartered for the occa- 
sion and was manned by seven Greek 
sailors. It seemed a bold venture of 
faith in God and trust in human nature 
to go alone with these unknown seamen 
on a night voyage of eighty miles and on 
a sea subject to severe and sudden 
storms ; but to stand on Patmos allayed 
all fears and inspired the necessary cour- 
age. Twice we had seen the " Sacred 
Isle " from the deck of the passenger 
steamer when we were en route from 



THE PRISONER OF PATMOS. 35 

Jerusalem to Athens and Constanti- 
nople, but it was a privilege we could 
not now forego to traverse the valleys 
and ascend the mountains on that island 
whither St. John was banished for the 
44 word of God and for the testimony of 
Jesus Christ." My only companion on 
that midnight voyage was the " wife of 
my youth," who with me had traveled 
the " wide world over." 

It is more than probable that, on his 
return voyage from Rome, St. John 
reached his prison island over the Ionian 
Sea, through the Gulf of Patras, up the 
Gulf of Corinth, and, disembarking to 
cross the isthmus, he again embarked 
at Salamis, and thence sailed amid these 
same islands which now met our gaze. 
Then the culture of Greece and the 



36 ST. JOHN, 

wealth of Rome had covered these is- 
lands with sacred shrines and temples 
of renown, and, as his prophetic eye 
glanced down the coming centuries, his 
great soul must have rejoiced in pros- 
pect that the divine Master whose pris- 
oner he was would some day reign over 
all the -^Egean Sea. 

All night long we sailed over these 
same waters and recalled the history of 
these same islands. The sea was calm, 
the sky cloudless, the starlight bril- 
liant, the moon full. There on our left 
was Tenos, home of the old lonians, who 
were compelled to serve in the fleets of 
Xerxes in the naval battle of Salamis. 
Not more than sixty miles in circumfer- 
ence, its outline appeared to the beholder 
a long, lofty chain of hills. Here lived 



THE PRISONER OF PATMOS. 37 

in wealth and luxury the old Venetian 
merchants, and it is now the summer re- 
sort of wealthy ^Egeans who love the 
wines of Tenos. An hour later we sailed 
along the silent shores of Delos, toward 
which the eyes of all Greece turned to 
its holy shrines. The birthplace of 
Apollo and Artemis, it was the sanctu- 
ary of the ^Egean, whose oracle, en- 
shrined in the Temple of Apollo, rivaled 
that of Delphi in sanctity, and thither 
Spartan and Athenian came to pay their 
homage and offer their gifts. What 
scenes of mirth once occurred on these 
now silent shores, when the " Ionians, in 
their long flowing robes, danced to the 
music of lute and pipe in the shade of 
the sacred palm ; " when poets recited 
and athletes contended ; when kings and 



38 ST. JOHN, 

warriors were banqueted at public ex- 
pense ! All now is changed : the night 
winds sighed through the broken arches 
of blue marble; the grand Portico of 
Philip is gone ; the white marble Temple 
of Apollo is a ruin ; the famous oracle 
of Delos is as silent as a tomb, and the 
cultured paganism of Greece has been 
superseded by temples dedicated to the 
Christ of St. John. 

Far into the night we had on our right 
Oliaros, Paros, and Naxos, three immor- 
tal islands, memorable for the great 
deeds of great men. In the white grotto 
of Oliaros is that wonderful chamber, 
one hundred by one hundred and fifty 
feet, from whose ceiling depend those 
snow-white stalactites twenty-five feet 
long. As we passed the head of a nar- 



THE PRISONER OF PATMOS. 39 

row strait we saw the round mountain of 
Paros, sloping evenly down to the plain 
which surrounds it ; it is Mount Mar- 
pessa, containing the quarries of Parian 
marble out of which were sculptured the 
Medicean "Venus" and the "Dying Glad- 
iator/' and out of which came the marble 
for the tomb of Napoleon, under the 
dome of the Hotel des Invalides. And 
here Darius planted his banners after the 
battle of Marathon, and here Miltiades 
received his death wound when he sought 
to reconquer the island. Unmindful of 
such historic scenes, the shepherd of to- 
day wanders with his flocks of sheep and 
goats over the mountain slopes. How 
splendidly Paros stood out in the moon- 
light of that memorable night, covered 
with many dwellings with their terraced 



40 ST. JOHN, 

roofs rising from out beautiful gardens ; 
and most conspicuous of all the scene 
was the Church of " Our Lady of the 
Hundred Gates/' attributed to Helena, 
mother of Constantine the Great. Far 
away to the eastward appeared the re- 
volving light on Cape Psilos, on the great 
island of Naxos, the most fertile and 
beautiful of the archipelago, twelve miles 
wide and ten miles long, the abode 
of twenty thousand Greek and Latin 
Christians. How weird appeared in the 
moonlight their white houses, whose 
sleeping inmates dreamed not that the 
eyes of a stranger were gazing on their 
silent homes. No wonder that the 
Greeks dedicated this island to Bacchus, 
whose wines rival the best in the Levant, 
and whose groves of the olive, orange, 



THE PRISONER OF PATMOS. 41 

lemon, fig, and pomegranate give wealth 
to the owner and pleasure to the trav- 
eler. Looking over the calm sea to the 
northeast, we saw the strong light on 
the great island of Icaria, scene of that 
legend of Icarus, whose wings of feathers 
and wax melted in the sun when he 
mounted too high in his flight from 
Minos, and, falling, was drowned near 
this historic island. 

The night was now far spent ; we ceased 
our vigils, and in our sleep dreamed of 
Patmos. At four the next morning we 
came again on the deck of our little 
steamer. Aurora, with her rosy fingers, 
was lifting the curtains of the dawn ; the 
moon had disappeared, and the stars one 
by one had faded from our view. So 
placid were the waters that we seemed 



42 ST. JOHN, 

to be gliding over a sea of glass ; a gentle 
breeze came whispering o'er the deep ; 
the pilot was at the wheel, and naught 
was heard save the steady stroke of the 
engine. Soon the bold, cliffy outlines of 
the long-wished-for island came in view. 
It was sunrise on Patmos. What mem- 
ories were awakened, what emotions were 
inspired ! The past returned with the 
actualities of the present. The visions 
of the Apocalypse were seen in the ver- 
ities of history. Nero the tyrant, St. 
John the exile — emperor and apostle, 
persecutor and persecuted — were in im- 
agination alive again. 

Situated in the ^Egean, south from 
Smyrna, and less than twenty miles from 
the mainland of Asia Minor, the island 
of Patmos is ten miles long, five miles 



THE PRISONER OF PATMOS. 43 

wide, and less than thirty in circuit. A 
narrow isthmus divides the island into 
almost equal parts north and south, with 
Port Scala on the east and Port Merika 
on the west. On this narrow strip of 
land stood the ancient city in whose har- 
bor St. John landed. The whole coast 
is deeply indented ; the lofty cliffs rise 
out of the sea; the valleys are deep and 
solemn ; the mountains attain an altitude 
of one thousand feet, from whose sum- 
mits is obtained a magnificent view of 
sea and bay, of islet and island, of 
vale and craggy height. Here and there 
palm and olive, fig and mulberry, cy- 
press and oak, almond and pine adorn 
the island and give industry to the peo- 
ple. Five thousand souls dwell there in 
peace, industrious and thrifty. Order 



44 ST. JOHN, 

reigns, and one policeman is the guard- 
ian of life and property. Patmos is 
one of the " Fortunate Isles." No Turk 
has trodden its soil, no mosque shadows 
its landscape ; the small government tax 
of two thousand five hundred dollars is 
annually carried by a deputy to the 
pasha of Rhodes. Neither piracy nor 
slavery nor the plague has ever cursed 
its shores. The islanders are Greek 
Christians, gentle, intelligent, happy, 
and in its clear, pure atmosphere dwell 
together as brethren. As we passed 
through their streets and along their 
highways they opened their doors and 
greeted us with flowers and saluted us 
with genuine hospitality. 

From early dawn to our arrival the 
bold and massive southwestern cliffs of 



THE PRISONER OF PATMOS. 45 

Patmos, like some Cyclopean wall rising 
from the sea, appeared to view, and over 
against the dark background a solitary 
sail was seen white in the morning light, 
moving slowly in the light breeze toward 
some neighboring island. The approach 
was enchanting; hour after hour, in the 
stillness of the morning, we drew nearer 
and nearer ; the illusion of nearness was 
fascinating yet deceptive. Winds and 
waves had indented the rock-bound coast 
and carved out many a grotto which re- 
sounded to the voice of the deep. Far 
away, one thousand feet above us, was 
seen Mount Elias, crowned with a tem- 
ple to the prophet. Soon the white city 
appeared on the distant hills, clustering 
around the " Monastery of St. John the 
Divine. " Now we entered the quiet har- 



46 ST. JOHN, 

bor of La Scala, landlocked, not unlike 
two thirds of a circle, and wherein were 
ships at anchor. The village of La Scala, 
the Lower Town, and the principal port 
of the island, is on the eastern side of 
the isthmus, on the shores of a quiet lit- 
tle bay, wherein one third of the people 
reside, mostly merchants who trade in 
fruits. The Upper Town is on a lofty 
hill, half an hour's ride up a steep road, 
paved with large round stones hard to 
the foot of man and beast. We were 
en route for the Monastery of St. John. 
Our coming had been announced, and at 
the gate of the monastery the venerable 
bishop and his forty monks received us 
with much ceremony and many cordial 
greetings. Each wore the black robe 
and brimless hat peculiar to Greek 



THE PRISONER OF PATMOS. 47 

monks. They conducted us to the ca- 
thedral, not unlike in ornamentation the 
Greek churches we had seen in Russia. 
Then we were escorted to the reception 
chamber, adjoining which was the room 
where we were to lodge, and wherein we 
conversed for hours on the progress of 
Christianity in the East and in the West. 
For one thousand years the monks of 
the Order of St. Christodulus have occu- 
pied Patmos, the gift of the Emperor 
Alexis I, sometimes called Comnenus, 
who in the eleventh century issued a 
golden bull, which is still preserved, 
granting this island to them to found 
thereon a monastery, which is the origin 
of the " Monastery of St. John the Di- 
vine. " Theirs is now one of the richest 

monastic orders in the East, and to it 
4 



48 ST. JOHN, 

belongs the southern half of the island, 
with possessions in Samos, Crete, and 
other islands of the Levant. We found 
the monks of Patmos refined and intel- 
ligent, and we saw one whose saintly face 
and gentle manners reminded us of the 
" Beloved Disciple." They elect out of 
their number one to be their bishop, 
who reports to the Patriarch of Constan- 
tinople. Fifty years ago they had here 
a flourishing school of languages, attend- 
ed by many students from neighboring 
islands and from distant lands, but now 
they teach in the village schools and de- 
vote themselves to study and meditation. 
Our visit to the library was replete 
with interest. Of the six hundred an- 
cient manuscripts once here about three 
hundred remain, some of which are 



THE PRISONER OF PATMOS. 49 

of high antiquity and of great value. 
The one of most absorbing interest to 
us is the story of the life of St. John 
from the ascension of our Lord to his 
release from exile, said to have been 
written by one of St. John's personal 
friends, and with it we found the monks 
quite familiar. From the library we 
passed through the cloisters and cells 
and chapels of the old monastery, which 
crowns one of the highest hills, and 
which, with its massive walls, towers, and 
battlements, resembles a fortress. As- 
cending to the highest terrace, we had 
an entrancing view of a panorama never 
to be forgotten, and in the clear atmos- 
phere could be seen Icaria, Naxos, and 
numberless islets resting on the calm 
bosom of the iEgean. Descending to the 



50 ST. JOHN. 

lower galleries, we passed out to visit the 
Convent of the Holy Sisters, wherein are 
forty nuns of the Greek Church, most of 
them aged ; one is blind, one is noted as 
a linguist, all are devoted to sweet char- 
ity, and all live in peace. 

Guided by Brother Mucarius, a gentle 
spirit, we came down the mountain to 
the Church of the Holy Grotto, the tra- 
ditional prison of St. John, where Mu- 
carius is the parish priest, and who be- 
lieves the legends he recites to others. 
The little church is built over what 
seems to be a natural grotto. In the 
steep hillside is the recess in the rock 
wherein the head of the illustrious exile 
rested when asleep, and above it is the 
sign of the Greek cross he made in the 
rock. Over the altar is a picture of St. 



THE PRISONER OF PATMOS. 51 

John in a heavenly trance, to whom 
Christ appears in glory with saints and 
angels. While to us this grotto was im- 
pressive, we preferred to think of him as 
having the freedom of the island, and 
when threading its solemn valleys or 
standing on its majestic mountains 
Christ appeared to him in those marvel- 
ous visions of " the things which thou 
hast seen, and the things which are, and 
the things which shall be hereafter. ,, 

The monks of Patmos are in accord 
with the current tradition that St. John 
was banished to the island during the 
Neronian persecution, which continued 
four years, from A. D. 64 to 68 ; but how 
long he remained is an unsettled ques- 
tion. There is no indication that Nero, 
a heartless tyrant, would cease his cruel- 



52 ST. JOHN. 

ties on the Christians during his reign, 
nor is there a suspicion of hope that dur- 
ing the brief and tumultuous reigns of 
the vicious Galba, Otho, and Vitellius, 
whose imperial lives covered less than a 
year, any attention would be given to 
relieve the persecuted disciples of the 
Lord. Vespasian, who succeeded these 
" Mock Emperors,'' and who reigned for 
ten years, from A. D. 69 to 79, and who 
is considered wise and beneficent, the 
patron of science and art, may have sus- 
pended the cruelties practiced on the 
Christians, but there is nothing in his- 
tory to suggest that he was tolerant to- 
ward Christianity. There is more ground 
for hope that St. John was released from 
exile by the Emperor Titus, who suc- 
ceeded his father Vespasian in A. D. 79, 



THE PRISONER OF PATMOS. 53 

whose wisdom and kindness won for him 
the honorable title, " The Delight of 
Mankind." The Jews had compelled 
him by their madness to destroy the 
Holy Temple when he took Jerusalem, 
and that against his protest ; and this 
his noble protest was in harmony with 
his public sympathy for his people, as 
shown in his visit to the distressed dis- 
tricts laid waste by the eruption of Ve- 
suvius, when Pompeii and Herculaneum 
were destroyed. Whether the apostle's 
banishment lasted ten years or fifteen, 
there is a prevalent opinion, which 
seems well founded, that St. John 
wrote the Apocalypse while in exile, and 
on his return to Ephesus he finished 
his gospel at the age of eighty, and 
penned his epistles in his ninetieth year. 



54 ST. JOHN, 

As we read the Book of Revelation 
on the scene of its wonderful manifesta- 
tions, we were impressed with the sim- 
plicity and nobility of St. John's own 
statement of his imprisonment : "I John, 
who also am your brother, and compan- 
ion in tribulation, and in the kingdom and 
patience of Jesus Christ, was in the isle 
that is called Patmos, for the word of God, 
and for the testimony of Jesus Christ." 
How simple and exalted the record ! He 
is a " companion in tribulation ; " he 
omits the circumstances of his arrest, the 
time, the place, the emperor, but states 
the fact and the island of his banish- 
ment, and that without comment. 
He omits all that exalts self, all those 
personal allusions which fill the biogra- 
phies of great men, all the daily incidents 



THE PRISONER OF PATMOS. 55 

of those he met, what he saw, and how 
he passed those dreary years of confine- 
ment away from the society and fellow- 
ship of believers ; yet in all he writes 
there is not one word of complaint. 

My Lord, how full of sweet content, 
I pass my years of banishment ! 
Where'er I dwell, I dwell with thee, 
In heaven, in earth, or on the sea. 
To me remains nor place nor time ; 
My country is in every clime: 
I can be calm and free from care 
On any shore, since God is there. 

While place we seek, or place we shun, 
The soul finds happiness in none; 
But with a God to guide our way, 
'Tis equal joy, to go or stay. 
Could I be cast where thou art not, 
That were indeed a dreadful lot ; 
But regions none remote I call, 
Secure of rinding God in all. 

— Madame Guy on. 



56 ST. JOHN, 

He is careful to designate to whom he 
writes, and who were to be custodians of 
the wonderful book ; he addresses his 
message to the * seven churches of 
Asia." And there were but " seven ; " 
there had been eight, but in the ninth 
year of Nero's reign an earthquake over- 
whelmed both Laodicea and Colossae, 
which were not far apart, and when La- 
odicea was rebuilt Colossae remained a 
ruin, and its church became identified 
with that of the Laodiceans. During his 
absence grave errors had been received, 
and to correct them and destroy their 
influence he writes like one familiar 
with the facts. 

Having warned those in error and 
cheered those w r ho were steadfast, great 
thoughts now fill his mind and mighty 






THE PRISONER OF PATMOS. 57 

visions pass before his prophetic view. 
He hears a voice saying, " Come up 
hither, and I will show thee things 
which must be hereafter." He is called 
to make a record which should be to the 
Church for all time, a perpetual prophet, 
always speaking of successive events and 
their fulfillment as ages roll on, which 
seems to be the design of the Apoca- 
lypse, that book of wonders. To St. 
John was revealed the fall of empires, 
the downfall of tyrants, and the over- 
throw of all opposing powers. The 
trumpets sounded ; the vials of woes 
were emptied; the seals of mysteries 
were broken ; the day of calamities had 
come. Nero was burning the Christians, 
like so many torches, to light up his 
royal gardens in Rome. He had slain 



58 ST. JOHN, 

St. Paul at Tre Fontane. Throughout 
the empire his minions of woe were 
burning or beheading or casting to the 
wild beasts of the arena men, women, 
and children whose only offense was 
their faith in Christ. What shall be the 
final issue ? Martyrs must be supported 
by the promise of ultimate triumph, the 
faith of survivors must be cheered to en- 
dure cruel mockings. Who shall con- 
quer in the end, Christ or Caesar? The 
-Church must be assured that all opposi- 
tion to the Church of the Lord shall go 
down forever. This is the mission of the 
Apocalypse. 

We are without information how long 
the apostle was in writing his book 
called u The Revelation of Jesus Christ ; " 
whether it was a rapid, continuous effort, 



THE PRISONER OF PATMOS. 59 

or written at long intervals during his 
stay upon the island ; whether he wrote 
at the time when some of the national 
events occurred, or antecedent or subse- 
quent thereto. Twelve times he is com- 
manded to "write;""- sometimes the 
thought and language are his own, anon 
both are dictated to him. He was " in 
the Spirit," under divine influence to 
guide and suggest, and it was on the 
" Lord's day " — the Christian Sabbath. 
These revelations came to him from 
those who appeared to him from out the 
unseen world, who dictated to him what 
he wrote ; he saw much in vision, either 
by illumination of imagination or by 
pictorial representation of passing events, 
and of the things that were to come to 
pass in the far distant future of our 



60 ST. JOHN, 

world's history, and evidently much 
came to him by suggestion and impulse ; 
but whether the one or the other, he 
was " in the Spirit on the Lord's day." 
As by a series of dissolving views he pre- 
sents to the Church the fall of the 
Roman empire; the destruction of Jeru- 
salem and the final overthrow of the 
Jewish commonwealth, the rise and fall 
of papal Rome under the figure of the 
" scarlet woman ; " the origin and spread 
of Mohammedanism — the " false proph- 
et; "the dawn and increasing splendor of 
the Reformation ; and the final triumph 
of Messiah's reign, when shall appear 
" a new heaven and a new earth : for the 
first heaven and the first earth were 
passed away." 

Much of the bold imagery wherewith 



THE PRISONER OF PATMOS. 61 

St. John clothed his thoughts may have 
been suggested by the surrounding 
landscape of his island home. Looking 
out from some mountain peak into the 
boundless expanse before him, he saw " a 
throne set in the heaven ; " there are 
times when the roar of the mighty ^Egean 
is as u the sound of many waters ; " so 
profound is the calm sometimes there 
that the ocean is like unto a " sea of glass 
like unto crystal ; " in the dawn and at 
sunset, when falls the golden light of the 
sun on the still waters, the scene resem- 
bles a " sea of glass mingled with fire ; " 
and when the war of the elements is on, 
when sea, air, and sky are in commotion, 
when lightnings flash and thunder 
answers thunder, when the Euroclydon 
blows from Mount Ida, and all nature 



62 ST. JOHN. 

seems in her last convulsions, then 
" every mountain and island were moved 
out of their places, and every island fled 
away, and the mountains were not 
found." 

In all this marvelous book there is 
nothing more interesting and consoling 
to the human heart than Christ's per- 
sonal and visible appearance to his friend, 
and that after the lapse of thirty-five 
years. A year after the ascension St. 
Stephen saw the Lord ; three years 
thereafter St. Paul conversed with him 
on the way to Damascus ; and now St. 
John beholds him face to face, looks 
upon that familiar and glorified form, 
and once more hears that voice that had 
so often stirred his inmost soul : " I am 
he that liveth, and was dead ; and, be- 



THE PRISONER OF PATMOS. 63 

hold, I am alive for evermore.' ' This is 
the sweetest and most assuring of all the 
New Testament epiphanies, and when 
we read it where it had occurred it filled 
our souls with hope and joy unspeakable 
and full of glory, as the unanswerable 
argument of our immortality and the 
crowning proof that our departed friends 
still live, and sometimes come to us to 
cheer us in our struggle for the crown 
of life. 

And St. John is favored with two 
views of our Lord, one as he will ever 
appear to his friends — in his personality — 
and another in his official dignity. How 
sublime the contrast ! He says : " I was 
in the Spirit on the Lord's day " — which 
was to emphasize the resurrection of 
Christ — " and heard behind me a great 



64 ST. JOHN, 

voice, as of a trumpet " — a call from afar 
of majesty and strength, filling all the 
air for a wide distance, announcing a 
fact : " I am Alpha and Omega, the first 
and the last." Then followed the glori- 
ous vision : " I saw seven golden candle- 
sticks ; and in the midst of the seven 
candlesticks one like unto the Son of 
man " — the chosen appellation of him- 
self — " clothed with a garment down to 
the foot " — a festal robe ; " girt about the 
paps with a golden girdle " — for rest and 
festivity, not about the loins, as in war 
and labor. " His head and his hair were 
white like w r ool, as white as snow " — not 
the sign of old age, but of purity and 
glory, aspreintimated when transfigured, 
when his " garments became white and 
glistering; '•' " his eyes were as a flame 



THE PRISONER OF PATMOS. 65 

of fire " — glowed with pureness and sin- 
cerity ; "his feet like unto fine brass, as 
if they burned in a furnace " — brightness 
and splendor, a furnace aglow, a molten 
motion, moving in holiness ; " his voice 
as the sound of many waters " — the maj- 
esty of the ocean when the sound is 
heard from the responsive shore. " His 
countenance was as the sun shineth in 
his strength " — like the noontide glory 
of the sun in a cloudless sky. " Out of 
his mouth went a sharp two-edged 
sword " — the law and the Gospel, justice 
and mercy. u He had in his right hand 
seven stars" — the seven ministers of the 
seven churches of Asia under his pro- 
tecting care. "And when I saw him, I 
fell at his feet as dead " — no wonder ; 
such would have been the effect upon 



66 ST. JOHN, 

us. " He laid his right hand upon me M — 
how like the gentle Christ — and said : 
" Fear not " — it is the old assurance, " It 
is I ; be not afraid" — "I am he that was 
dead " — you remember my death and 
burial ; " behold, I am alive for ever- 
more " — immortal fact; and have the 
keys of hell and of death " — all authority 
over all departed spirits. 

How different this personal appear- 
ance of Christ as St. John's friend, and 
his official appearance as seen at a sub- 
sequent period, as " King of kings, and 
Lord of lords," on a " white horse " — 
symbol of triumph. " His eyes were as 
a flame of fire, and on his head were many 
crowns " — tokens of his sovereignty. 
"He was clothed with a vestment dipped 
in blood " — significant of the atonement ; 



THE PRISONER OF PATMOS. 67 

" and his name is called The Word of 
God " — indicative that he conquers the 
world by moral forces. 

We found the monks of Patmos fa- 
miliar with the beautiful legends of St. 
John's life, many of which are in a vol- 
ume in the library of the monastery, not 
a few of which rest on strong probability. 
Whether the release of the apostle came 
in the reign of Vespasian or at the be- 
ginning of that of his son Titus, there is 
a general agreement that he returned to 
Ephesus and resumed the personal over- 
sight of the seven churches of Ionic 
Asia. His return was a jubilee to the 
Christians and a renewed assurance that 
Christ was walking among the golden 
candlesticks. As the islands of the 
Levant were then thickly populated and 



68 ST. JOHN, 

Patmos is not more than twenty-five 
miles from Samos, marking the ancient 
port of Ephesus, it is supposable that 
St. John had been kept informed as to 
the great events which were occurring 
throughout the Roman empire ; that he 
knew when Nero committed suicide and 
the throne was left to Vespasian ; when 
Jerusalem was destroyed, and when Titus 
became master of the Roman world. Nor 
was he uninformed as to the progress of 
Christianity both east and west, and es- 
pecially as to the spiiitual conditions of 
the Asian churches. 

More than twenty years of his life are 
yet before him to confirm the believer, 
to combat the heretic, to overthrow 
pagan Rome. He is now an itinerant, 
and goes from Ephesus to Smyrna, 



THE PRISONER OF PATMOS. 69 

through the valley of the Cayster and 
the Hermus, where he visits Polycarp, 
bishop of that renowned city ; thence 
sixty miles to Pergamos, on the river 
Cetius, built of white marble, where 
stood a temple to ^Esculapius, and 
where "Antipas, my faithful martyr, was 
slain ; " thence fifty miles to Thyatira, 
on the banks of the Caicus, where that 
" woman Jezebel " had seduced the 
people. Continuing his journey, he came 
to Sardis, situated on the river Pactolus, 
that great and prosperous city, once the 
proud capital of Lydia, the pride of 
Croesus, where were " a few names even 
in Sardis which have not defiled their gar- 
ments ; and they shall walk with me in 
white : for they are worthy." Threading 
his way along the valley of the Hermus, 



70 ST. JOHN, 

he comes to Philadelphia, which has 
survived all the revolutions of time — 
" Because thou hast kept the word of 
my patience, I also will keep thee from 
the hour of temptation ; " and following 
the rocky paths along the slopes of 
Mount Tmolus, he arrives at Laodicea, 
rich and grand, whose believers were 
" neither cold nor hot." 

But Ephesus was his metropolitan 
city, whose careless Christians had " left 
their first love," and where resided those 
professed believers who denied our 
Lord's human nature, who asserted that 
his body was a mere appearance without 
substance or reality. While there he 
has the pen of a ready writer and com- 
pletes the sacred canon of the New Tes- 
tament, to supply what Matthew, Mark, 



THE PRISONER OF PATMOS. 71 

and Luke had omitted, and to refute 
certain errors there rife and give to the 
Church and the world a larger view of 
Christ. There St. John writes his gos- 
pel, the most precious of all the Holy 
Scriptures. It is a clear, calm, coura- 
geous declaration of the two natures of 
Christ, " God manifest in the flesh," a 
revelation to the world of Christ as St. 
John knew and saw and realized him in 
his personal experience ; it is the open- 
ing of the divine heart of Jesus to the 
gaze of the world. Of the eight miracles 
he records, six are new and such as to 
convince men that they might believe in 
Jesus and " have life through his name." 
It is the most powerful and overwhelm- 
ing attestation of the truth of Christian- 
ity extant ; and because of this inherent 



72 ST. JOHN, 

power on the intellect and over the con- 
science of the world it has been assailed 
by a bitterness of opposition not ex- 
pressed against either of the other gos- 
pels. It is the recorded testimony of 
an eye witness himself who suffered all 
things for the truth. 

The monks of Patmos could add little 
to the accepted legends touching the 
closing scenes in the life of this illustri- 
ous man, and referred us to the early 
fathers, who collated and transmitted 
those occurrent events in his private life 
and public ministry which have come 
to us, and which make so attractive the 
biographies of great men. This is the 
charm of Plutarch's Lives of those re- 
nowned Greeks and Romans of whom 
we never weary reading, when related 



THE PRISONER OF PATMOS. 73 

by such a master hand. Much he writes 
is legendary, yet his legends have the 
flavor of truth and high probability. 
From Polycarp, St. John's friend and 
disciple, down to the historian Eusebius, 
there was a succession of bishops, who 
recorded what they had known and heard 
of the " Beloved Disciple," and their rec- 
ord is true. The story of the partridge 
tamed and caressed by St. John, with 
which he played to relieve the tension 
of mental strain, is not unworthy an 
apostle ; it is the old story of the hunt- 
er's unbent bow. That he was ship- 
wrecked when on his way from Pales- 
tine to Ephesus is in keeping with the 
checkered life of the Lord's chosen 
friends, who are not exempt from the 
ills which befall less honored men. His 



74 ST, JOHN, 

pursuit of the young robber to the far- 
off mountains of Pergamos, the resort of 
thieves, to rescue from a life of sin and 
shame one who had fallen away during 
John's exile, is so Christlike and beauti- 
ful as to make it a reality. The resur- 
rection of the good Drusiana finds a 
parallel in the restoration to life of Tab- 
itha of Joppa by St. Peter. This holy 
woman of Ephesus excelled in all good 
works, and her home had been the home 
of the apostle. On the day of his return 
from Pat m os he met her funeral proces- 
sion, and, approaching the bier, he 
prayed and his friend returned to life. 
Such was the sanctity of his person and 
the protecting care heaven had over him, 
that no harm came to him when com- 
pelled to drink from the poisoned cup ; 



THE PRISONER OF PATMOS. 75 

that no rain fell on the uncovered ora- 
tory where he preached in Ephesus, and 
wherein he wrote his gospel and his three 
epistles ; that when he felt his end ap- 
proaching he had his grave prepared, and 
calmly laid himself down therein to die ; 
and that his sepulcher in Mount Prion 
was known to Polycarp and Ignatius and 
Papias, who were with him to the last. 

Poetry and art have rescued him from 
the grave and given a legendary inter- 
pretation to the Saviour's words, " If I 
will that he tarry till I come, what is 
that to thee? ' In a splendid work on 
sacred and legendary art there is a story 
worthy of immortality: " King Edward 
the Confessor had a special veneration 
for St. John. One day, returning from 
his church at Westminster, where he had 



76 ST. JOHN. 

been hearing mass in honor of the evan- 
gelist, he was accosted by a pilgrim, who 
asked him for an alms for the love of 
God and St. John. The king drew from 
his finger a ring, and, unknown to any- 
one, gave it to the beggar. When the 
king had reigned twenty-four years, two 
pilgrims, Englishmen, in the Holy Land, 
who were about to return to England, 
were met by one who was also in the 
habit of a pilgrim, who inquired of what 
country they were ; and, on being told 
of England, he said to them, ' When ye 
shall have arrived in your own country, 
go to Kirig Edward and salute him in 
my name. Say to him that I thank him 
for the alms bestowed on me in a certain 
street in Westminster ; for there on a 
certain day, as I begged of him an alms, 



THE PRISONER OF PATMOS. 77 

he bestowed on me this ring. And ye 
shall carry it back to hifri, saying that in 
six months from this time he shall quit 
the world and come and remain with me 
forever. ' 

"The pilgrims, being astonished, said, 
1 Who art thou, and where is thy dwell- 
ing place ? ' And he, answering, said, ' I 
am John the Evangelist ; Edward, your 
king, is my friend, and for the sanctity 
of his life I hold him dear. Go now, 
therefore, deliver him this message and 
this ring, and I will pray to God that ye 
may arrive safely in your own country.' 
He then vanished out of their sight. 

" The pilgrims, praising and thanking 
the Lord for this vision, went on their 
journey. Arrived in England, they re- 
paired to the king and delivered the ring 



/3c 

M70~ C* 



78 



ST. JOHN. 



and message. The king received the 
news joyfully, conferred honors on the 
pilgrims, and prepared himself to depart 
according to the message he had re- 
ceived." 




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Treatment Date: June 2005 

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